Deutsche Bank’s capital ratio boosted after Hua Xia sale

10 November, 2016

Wang Yaoting’s employer Hua Xia

The European Central Bank said it had agreed to include Deutsche Bank’s sale of its stake in lender Hua Xia in stress test results earlier this year after Chinese authorities gave assurances the deal would be approved. The inclusion of the stake in the stress test calculations boosted Deutsche Bank’s common equity tier-one capital ratio, a closely watched measure of financial strength, in the adverse scenario modelled as part of the exercise, from 7.4 per cent to 7.8 per cent.

[June 2015 Deputy head of Hua Xia Bank Ltd part-owned by Germany’s Deutsche Bank, arrested
Shares in Hua Xia Bank Ltd , a Beijing-based lender part-owned by Germany’s Deutsche Bank, fell more than 6 percent on May 4 a day after the Chinese bank said a deputy head and vice president was under investigation for suspected disciplinary violations.
The Beijing branch of of the CPC Beijing Municipal Commission for Discipline inspection, the governing Communist Party’s anti-corruption body, has opened a case against Wang Yaoting, Huaxia Bank received the “CPC Beijing Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection filing a written decision”, to initiate disciplinary action for the bank’s vice president Mr. Wang Yaoting who was taken away for the investigation,

Wang Yaoting was born in July 1963 , Ph.D., senior economist. Former people’s Bank China education department deputy director of the Department of materials; Huaxia Bank Securities and director of the securities business department general manager, assistant president and general manager of the business department, Hangzhou branch of Huaxia Bank, Huaxia Bank, party secretary, assistant president, vice president, Party committee of Huaxia Bank (director of the general manager, and information technology department from project development office). Since 2007, as vice president of the Party committee, Huaxia bank. Wang Yaoting 2014 annual salary of 2120,000 yuan [342,018 US Dollars].
Deutsche Bank’s subscription is part of a private placement of shares to its three largest shareholders In April 2011, holders with an overall issuance value of up to RMB 20.8 billion (approx. EUR 2.3 billion). Subject to regulatory approvals, this investment will increase Deutsche Bank’s equity stake in Hua Xia Bank from 17.12% of issued capital to 19.99%, the Company issued 1,859,197,460 shares subject to restrictions on sales in a non-public manner to Shougang Corporation, Yingda International Holdings Corporation, Ltd. and Deutsche Bank Luxembourg S.A., who subscribed to 691,204,239 shares, 653,306,499 shares and 514,686,722 shares, respectively. The shares that the said investors subscribed to are locked for 60 months from 26 April 2011. The Company will apply to the Shanghai Stock Exchange (“SSE”) for the non-public offering of these shares on 26 April 2016

Gao Jue declined to comment through his current employer, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

JPMorgan Chase & Co is under federal scrutiny over hiring the son of China’s Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng. Gao Jue started work in the summer of 2007. Mr Gao started working for Goldman in 2013 and is now in the bank s natural resources group in Hong Kong.
Gao Hucheng, who was promoted to minister in March 2013, offered to “go extra miles” for the investment bank if it spared his son during a major layoff.

Zhang was said to have taken a steep pay cut to join ICBC. In a press release, Deutsche Bank said Zhang was “to follow [a] government call” to join ICBC.

Deutsche Bank is demanding that Zhang Hongli, now senior executive vice-president of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), repay Deutsche Bank US$3.9 million. He held the dual posts as China chairman and head of global banking for Asia-Pacific ex-Japan at Deutsche Bank. Regulatory scrutiny of investment banks in the US has expanded into hiring practices in China. The US authorities are looking into whether large banks, including JPMorgan, hired the children of China’s rich and powerful to win lucrative IPO deals. The money went to an offshore company held by his relative.
Zhang caused the Hong Kong branch of Deutsche Bank to move US$3.9 million to the account of a company called Harperskille at the Shenzhen branch of China Merchants Bank. The money was a commission to Harperskille for helping Deutsche Bank secure a deal to become an underwriter for the public listing of China Shenhua Energy – the world’s second-largest initial public offering in 2005. China Shenhua was listed in Hong Kong in June that year, raising US$3.3 billion. Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch and China International Capital Corp got the business, defeating Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Zhang insisted that the transfer was proper and that he had received verbal approval from senior Deutsche Bank management before the transfer was made.
It is a customary practice among investment banks, particularly those from Europe, to pay a middleman commission for bringing in lucrative deals.
Zhang’s appointment with ICBC – the world’s biggest bank by total assets – in April 2010 made him the first Chinese employee of a Western financial institution to be recruited as a senior manager at a state lender.
The 49-year old is also a member of the national committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
During his 10-year stint at Deutsche Bank, Zhang was known as a prolific dealmaker. Apart from the Shenhua Energy IPO, he was also instrumental in helping ICBC’s record-breaking US$19 billion listing and that of China Life.

PMorgan is hoping to fetch $1 billion for its Asia-based Global Special Opportunities Group. But interested buyers should consider the recent turmoil the bank has encountered in China.

JPMorgan has put its Asia-based Global Special Opportunities Group on the block, hoping to fetch a cool $1 billion from the sale. The bank has been shopping the group around to a number of private equity firms and credit-focused hedge funds that apparently want greater exposure to the fast-growing Asian — and by Asian we really mean Chinese — credit markets.

The impetus behind this sale may have to do with all the heat JPMorgan has taken recently over its controversial Chinese hiring practices. The firm is supposedly under investigation by U.S. authorities for allegedly hiring the sons and daughters of Chinese officials in an attempt to gain access to China’s massive state-controlled companies.

[August 13 Chinese trial balloon for an extradition treaty with U.S. after Xi Jinping’s corruption crackdown]

Hurun Research Institute polled wealthy Chinese emigrants about their reasons for leaving the mainland. The most frequent responses were education (21 percent), pollution (20 percent), food safety (19 percent), social welfare (15 percent), health care (11 percent), wealth security (8 percent), and childbirth/obtaining foreign citizenship for their children (4 percent). To be sure, if “fleeing President Xi Jinping’s corruption crackdown” had been offered as a multiple-choice answer, it’s unlikely that any “economic fugitives” would have answered forthrightly.

More than 150 economic fugitives from China, most of whom are corrupt officials or face allegations of corruption, remain at large in the United States, according to an official from the Ministry of Public Security .Many Chinese economic fugitives still at large in US “The US has become the top destination for Chinese fugitives fleeing the law,” said Liao Jinrong, director general of the International Cooperation Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security.
Figures from the ministry show that during the past decade, Chinese police have brought only two fugitives home to stand trial. One of those was the high-profile fugitive Yu Zhendong, former head of the Bank of China branch in Kaiping, Guangdong province.
Yu was found guilty of corruption and embezzlement of funds of up to $482 million, and was repatriated in 2005 after spending four years on the run.
“We face practical difficulties in getting fugitives who fled to the US back to face trial due to the lack of an extradition treaty and the complex and lengthy legal procedures, ” Liao said.
He said an extradition treaty is essential between the countries but little progress has been made with the US.
Moreover, experts said, US judicial authorities misunderstand the Chinese judicial system and procedures.
“They always think Chinese judicial organs violate suspects’ human rights,” said Wang Gang, a senior official from the America and Oceanic affairs division of the ministry’s International Cooperation Bureau.

[July 23 JPMorgan China names Brett Krause]
JPMorgan Chase said on Wednesday it named Brett Krause to head its locally incorporated bank in China, adding to other recent hires as it rebuilds its leadership team in the country.

Krause, a 20-year banking veteran, was hired as president of JPMorgan Chase Bank (China) Company Limited, the New York-based bank said in an e-mailed statement. He joined JPMorgan in January and previously held leading roles at Citigroup, including senior country officer in Vietnam.

JPMorgan earlier in July said it had hired former UBS AG banker David Li as the new head of overall China business, including investment banking. The bank’s chief executive for China investment banking, Fang Fang, left the firm in March, amid a probe of JPMorgan hiring practices in Asia.

Lilly Chang
Fulmark – JPM China connection

A consultancy firm operated by former premier, Wen Jiabao’s daughter, who often goes by the name Lily Chang, had been paid $1.8m by the US financial services giant JPMorgan, her consulting firm is Fullmark Consultants. The company was set up in the British Virgin Islands by Chang’s husband, Liu Chunhang, in 2004. He is a former Morgan Stanley employee, and he remained as sole director and shareholder until 2006, when he took a job in China’s banking regulation agency. Nominal ownership of the firm was transferred at that time to Zhang Yuhong, a Wen family friend. One purpose for such companies is to allow for the establishment of bank accounts in the company’s name, a legal measure that nonetheless makes tracing of assets a more complicated task.

Deutsche Bank is being investigated by regulators looking to see whether it hired the children of Chinese government officials as a way to make connections and attract business, a source with knowledge of the probe .

JP Morgan have been probed by U.S. regulators regarding their hiring practices in China. Mar 31, 2014 :Deutsche Bank AG is weighing whether to refrain from working on China General Nuclear Power Group’s initial public offering amid a probe into hiring practices in Asia. Germany’s largest bank employs the daughter of Shenzhen-based China General Nuclear’s chairman, He Yu. He Yu’s daughter Celia isn’t currently working for Deutsche Bank. Celia He was hired in September 2011 by Beijing-based Zhong De Securities Co., which is part-owned by Deutsche Bank She was recruited into Deutsche Bank’s investment-banking department. She has also worked in global credit trading,

[May 30]

China Daily graphic 2014/05/30

Fang Fang belongs to the faction of Zeng Qinghong, a former Politburo Standing Committee member

Fang Fang is backed by Zeng Qinghong, the No.2 boss of Jiang Zemin’s faction. The news has been publicly reported in China, and is a sign that something has happened with Zeng Qinghong. Zeng had been in charge of Hong Kong and Macau affairs for a long period, and is currently involved in Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang’s cases.
Fang Fang is unable to leave Hong Kong and will face further investigation and legal charges. Investment bankers at JP Morgan are hiring lawyers for protection against possible future legal charges.

Fang Fang, who is 48 years old, has a complicated political background. He is a delegate to the CCP’s Political Consultative Conference and the chairman of Hua Jing Society, the Hong Kong branch for CCP princelings.

Fang Fang, former chief executive officer for JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s China investment bank, was arrested by Hong Kong’s anti-graft agency. Fang resigned from the New York-based firm in March amid a U.S. investigation into whether the firm employed people in Asia so that their relatives in government would steer business to the bank, people with knowledge of the probes have said. The bank hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing.

The banker, a 12-year veteran of JPMorgan, is out on bail after he was released by the Independent Commission Against Corruption without disclosing when Fang was taken in for questioning. He’s restricted from leaving Hong Kong, it said.

Fang reports to Therese Esperdy, the bank’s co-head of banking for Asia-Pacific. Esperdy, who relocated to Hong Kong in 2011 from the firm’s New York headquarters to take charge of its advisory business was made co-head of corporate and investment banking in the Asia-Pacific region the following year.

Ms. Therese Esperdy serves as the Co-Head of Asia-Pacific Investment Banking at JP Morgan Chase & Co. Ms. Esperdy served as the Head of High-Grade Debt Capital Markets of JP Morgan Chase & Co. since November 22, 2004 and also served as its Global Head of Debt Capital Markets. She has been a Non-Executive Director at National Grid plc since March 18, 2014.

JP Morgan. perhaps, hired sons and daughters of senior Chinese officials in the hope of winning deals from major state-owned firms. JP Morgan’s hiring of the son of China Everbright Group’s chairman, Tang Shuangning, and a former railway official’s daughter. JP Morganhas ties, perhaps, with a consulting firm run by Wen Ruchun, also known as Lily Chang, the only daughter of former premier Wen Jiabao.

[May 18]A Manhattan lawyer jumped to his death out of his luxury Central Park West apartment building May 16. Stephen R. Hertz, a partner at the Third Avenue practice, Debevoise and Plimton LLP, sent a suicide letter to his ex-wife yesterday evening before he plunged out his 22nd-floor window and landed in a tree. A building manager found Hertz, 54, at 9:21 pm mangled in the tree — which had to be cut down to retrieve his lifeless body. Hertz sent the suicide note to his ex-wife who forwarded the email to a psychiatrist who then dialed 911.

Bank of America, led by CEO Brian Moynihan, called off its 2014 capital plan.

[May 4]
Banks often have applied the fair value option to structured notes like Merrill Lynch’s, in which the payout to the debtholder is tied to changes in some other instrument. BofA properly factored the gains and losses of those notes into its earnings, but regulatory capital excludes unrealized gains and losses – and BofA stripped out more of those changes than it should have.
When making the calculation to get from its capital under accounting rules to its regulatory capital, BofA stripped out “unrealized” changes on those structured notes – i.e., the paper gains and losses on notes it still held. But the bank also stripped out “realized” losses on structured notes that had matured or been redeemed – and it wasn’t supposed to do so.
The error amounted to a difference of more than $4 billion in BofA’s regulatory capital, or about 0.3 percentage point at most in the bank’s future expected regulatory capital ratios, not that much in the scheme of things. But it is significant because it erodes the “buffer” the bank would have in excess of future required minimum capital levels

[March 12]
In 2010, 38,364 suicides were reported, making suicide the 10th leading cause of death for Americans.

former Dewey & LeBoeuf executives Steven Davis, Stephen DiCarmine and Joel Sanders, along with former Dewey accounting employee Zachary Warren, filed into a downtown Manhattan courtroom Thursday to plead not guilty to multiple counts of fraud related to the firm’s 2012 collapse.

Clad in suits and handcuffs, former Dewey & LeBoeuf executives Steven Davis, Stephen DiCarmine and Joel Sanders, along with former Dewey accounting employee Zachary Warren, filed into a downtown Manhattan courtroom Thursday to plead not guilty to multiple counts of fraud related to the firm’s 2012 collapse.

Leonard Morton,Manhattan attorney, jumped to his death March 7 from his downtown office building, sources said.
The 44-year-old lawyer leaped from a 12th-floor window at 225 Broadway, landing face down on scaffolding above the sidewalk, according to law enforcement sources.
Police were called to the scene at 7:23 a.m., when responders found the man in cardiac arrest.

[March 5]

Autumn Ratke

It appears bitcoin’s recent turmoil has claimed its first life.

Autumn Radtke, a 28-year-old American CEO of bitcoin exchange firm First Meta, was found dead in her Singapore apartment on Feb. 28.
Local media are calling it a suicide, but Singapore officials are waiting for toxicology test results to determine a cause of death.
Radtke formerly worked with Apple and other Silicon Valley tech firms on developing digital payment systems.
Radtke’s death brings the number of questionable financial-sector deaths this year to eight.

[February 18]

HongKong rooftop jumper

The police said no suicide note was found.An investment banker at JP Morgan jumped to his death from the roof of the bank’s headquarters in Central yesterday.An initial police investigation showed he had recently told a colleague he was under heavy work-related stress, according to a police source involved in the investigation.

Witnesses said the man went to the roof of the 30-storey Chater House in the heart of Hong Kong’s central business district and, despite attempts to talk him down, jumped to his death.

[February 13]
On Feb. 10, the fourth banker in just over a month died of mysteriously causes. Ryan Henry Crane, an Executive Director in J.P. Morgan’s Global Program Trading desk, was found dead at the young age of 37.
Ryan Henry Crane was formerly employed by JPMorgan – a bank which was featured prominently in the news as recently as two weeks ago when another of its London-based employees committed suicide by jumping from the top floor of its Canary Wharf building. Third: Crane was an Executive Director in JPM’s Global Program Trading desk, founded in 1999 by an ex-DE Shaw‘er, a function of the firm which is instrumental to preserving JPM’s impeccable and (so far in 2013) flawless trading record of zero trading losses. – Zerohedge

While details of Crane’s death have not been released, the fact that he was a high level banker within the sphere of banks already involved in other mysterious deaths of three other financiers adds fuel to the fire that a hit list and banker purge may be currently underway.

[August 21 2013]

The punishing hours interns endure at investment banks were highlighted after the death of a young Bank of America Merrill Lynch employee who collapsed at home following three consecutive working days of 6am finishes.

Moritz Erhardt had been coming towards the end of a seven-week pre-graduate internship in London when his body was discovered by flatmates. The circumstances of the 21-year-old’s death are unknown but Scotland Yard is not treating it as suspicious. Mr Moritz was from Freiburg, south west Germany.

Around 300 interns working at various banks stay at the Claredale House student accommodation complex in Bethnal Green for between seven and 10 weeks over the summer.

One intern, who worked at one of the American “bulge-bracket” firms, memorably described the experience of working all night only to start the new day an hour later: “Every intern’s worst nightmare is what’s called ‘the magic roundabout which is when you get a taxi to drive you home at 7am and then it waits for you while you shower and change and then takes you back to the office.”The interns at Claredale House usually were foreigners. They are the star pupils from French, German, Australian, Chinese and Indian universities who arrive in London every summer to put their names into the hat for the City’s most prestigious banking jobs. The “hardcore” internships are the ones on the mergers and acquisitions desks, and last between eight and 10 weeks.

The banks every intern wants to work for — Barclays Capital, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, HSBC and, of course, Bank of America Merrill Lynch — pay their young charges well. Pro rata salaries of £40,000 or £50,000 mean that they can earn £10,000 for a summer’s work. Goldman Sachs is said to pay even more than that. The work is intense but the rewards are great if you can stand the pace. One former intern says there were 5,500 applicants for the two dozen internship places at his investment house when he did his summer there a few years ago.
A 25-year-old Masters student, one of the non-intern residents at Claredale House, said last night that Erhardt was “working crazy hours” and says most of the residents “work every Saturday and every Sunday”. Can she imagine any of them working 72 hours on the trot? “Yeah, definitely.”

A recent banking intern describes the work that eats up the small hours as “a lot of checking of documents, a lot of Excel, a lot of PowerPoint”. The interns spend a big chunk of their time preparing “pitchbooks” for client presentations, making the case for purchasing an educational group in Australia or a health training group in China.

“We would model the sector, the company, what they should pay for it, who their big guns are, what the challenges are, some ideas about integration and “synergies” — the most popular word in M+A [mergers and acquisitions].”

“When you’re an intern, you get given all the s*** work,” is the blunter summary of an intern arriving back at Claredale last night.

The City “bloodbaths” that have seen hundreds of thousands of workers laid off since the financial crisis hit have had a knock-on effect for the firm’s twenty-something summer helpers. There is anecdotal evidence that interns are doing more of the “client critical” work than they were expected to do a decade ago.

“I’m sure there are horror stories from the Eighties and Nineties all over the internet,” says a junior banker at a big City firm, “but the environment in the last three years has probably added to the idea that one has to keep working into the night, driven on by the fact that each intern is peering over his computer to see which other interns are left.”

The aspirant bankers who stay at Claredale pay between £156 and £168 per week for their small single-study bedrooms in shared flats. There are 246 such rooms in 59 flats over four storeys in the red-brick complex.

[September 25 2012]
Mr Adoboli then expected the market to rise again, which it did, But Mr Adoboli failed to close his position when he had the opportunity. Then the market dropped again, causing him to incur further losses, which he again hid.

Mr Adoboli’s defence, led by Charles Sherrard, claimed management had given mixed signals to traders, and that risk limits were not only high but regarded as flexible. According to Mr Sherrard, a culture of taking greater risks in the hope of generating higher profits had developed after the arrival of Yassine Bouhara, then one of the co-heads of global equities at UBS. “Throughout 2009 and 2011 this method of trading was endemic within the bank,” Mr Sherrard said.
[September 18]Despite seeing £233,000 pass through his NatWest Bank account in the 12 months prior to his arrest Mr Adoboli’s account was overdrawn by £3,594 when he was arrested on September 15 last year, the court was told. Across his four banks accounts and two credit cards the 32-year-old trader owed £4,181. His primary current account showed payments to eight pay-day loan companies including Wageday Advance, Wonga.com, Payday UK and Pounds to Pocket.
[September 14]Adoboli, from Whitechapel, East London, denies four counts of fraud and false accounting between October 2008 and September 2011.
During 2009-2010 when the “off book” trades occurred, Adoboli’s salary rose : beginning at £33,000 with a bonus of £7,500, by 2008 Adoboli was earning a combined sum of £65,000. Just two years later this was £360,000 – a basic salary of £110,000 and a bonus of £250,000 based partly on the bank’s wider performance but also on how much profit an employee brings in.
Adoboli racked up the giant losses undetected through three means. First, he often exceeded the official daily trading limit per employee of $100m. He also failed to hedge trades by making balancing trades to mitigate potential losses, an insurance method that also caps potential profits. By doing so Adoboli hoped to maximise profits and thus his bonus. Finally, he falsified data so as not to record his trades properly, often inventing false clients and trades for hedges.

[Sep 10]A jury was selected at today’s session. Arguments, which had been scheduled to start today at a London criminal court, were pushed back until the end of the week. Sept. 14

After spending nine months in Wandsworth prison in southwest London after his arrest on Sept. 15, 2011, Adoboli has been free on bail for three months.
He worked for the Zurich-based investment bank’s Delta One desk, which handles trades for clients — or risks the bank’s own money — typically by speculating on a basket of securities. The loss, which came from trading in Standard & Poor’s 500, DAX and EuroStoxx index futures, didn’t affect any client positions, according to UBS.

[September 16, 2011]Kweku Adoboli may have been caught out after the Swiss Central Bank unexpectedly devalued the franc last week, producing mammoth losses on his currency trades. Adoboli may have mis-hedged his exposure to the Swiss franc and attempted to hide it from his team when the market moved against him by overcompensating with a hedge in the opposite direction. Any short position on Swiss franc volatility would have suffered after volatilities rose again earlier this week. UBS claims the third largest share in global foreign exchange trading, and is the biggest trader in the euro/franc pairing.
Currency traders around the world either a) counted up the huge amounts of money they made from betting the currency would lose value; or b) counted the losses they’d racked up from betting on the Swiss Franc climbing further in value. Wilful blindness is more than mere negligence: it require knowing there’s a “high probability that a fact exists,” and “the defendant must take deliberate actions to avoid learning of that fact.”One suspects that, in keeping with what happened at many banks, Kerviel, 33, was encouraged to engage in ever more reckless gambling so long as he made a profit. Then when the plan turned sour, management sought to cover their own backs by claiming his trades were ‘unauthorized’ and blaming the whole thing on him. [the Jerome Kerviel affair ]